From Mecca with tolerance: religion,social recategorisation and social capital

Does participation in mass religious rituals promote intergroup conflict or does it promote intergroup tolerance? We assess these claims by examining the effects of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) on sociopolitical views of Muslims in Russia’s North Caucasus. Participant observation during the hajj and a quasi-experimental focus group study of pilgrims and non-pilgrims produced paradoxical findings. While the hajj strengthened their ingroup pride as Muslims, the pilgrims came through as more outgroup-tolerant and prosocial than the non-pilgrims. We develop a synthetic theoretical solution: in high-identity-value, high-diversity common group settings social recategorisation and social capital become transitive – that is, inclusive views and social capital effects within an ingroup extend to outgroups. This means that intergroup conflict could be reduced by not only maximising contact across conflicting groups, but also by bringing together as many subgroups as possible within each conflicting group in settings where their common identity is positively affirmed in a non-discriminatory fashion.     

The role of event relevance and congruence to social groups in flashbulb memory formation

ABSTRACT

Flashbulb memories are vivid, confidently held, long-lasting memories for the personal circumstances of learning about an important event. Importance is determined, in part, by social group membership. Events that are relevant to one’s social group, and furthermore, are congruent with the prior beliefs of that group, should be more likely to be retained as flashbulb memories. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was relevant to ongoing political conversations in both Germany and the Netherlands, but, while the disaster was congruent with German beliefs about the dangers of nuclear energy, it was incongruent with Dutch support for nuclear power. Danish participants would not have found the disaster to be particularly relevant. Partially consistent with this prediction, across two samples (N?=?265 and N?=?518), German participants were most likely to have flashbulb memories for the Fukushima disaster. Furthermore, event features thought to be related to flashbulb memory formation (e.g. ratings of importance and consequentiality) also differed as a function of nationality. Spontaneously generated flashbulb memories for events other than Fukushima also suggested that participants reported events that were relevant to national identity (e.g. the Munich attacks for Germans, the Utøya massacre for Danes, and Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 for Dutch participants).     

Locke,Kierkegaard and the Phenomenology of Personal Identity

Abstract

Personal Identity theorists as diverse as Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson have noted that the experiencing subject (the locus of present psychological experience) and the person (a human being with a career/narrative extended across time) are not necessarily coextensive. Accordingly, we can become psychologically alienated from, and fail to experience a sense of identity with, the person we once were or will be. This presents serious problems for Locke’s original account of “sameness of consciousness” constituting personal identity, given the distinctly normative (and indeed eschatological) focus of his discussion. To succeed, the Lockean project needs to identify some phenomenal property of experience that can constitute a sense of identity with the self figured in all moments to which consciousness can be extended. I draw upon key themes in Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of moral imagination to show that Kierkegaard describes a phenomenal quality of experience that unites the experiencing subject with its past and future, regardless of facts about psychological change across time. Yet Kierkegaard’s account is fully normative, recasting affective identification with past/future selves as a moral task rather than something merely psychologically desirable (Schechtman) or utterly contingent (Parfit, Strawson).     

Diagrams: Socrates and Meno's slave

Abstract

When do two mental items belong to the same life? We could be content with the answer ‐just when they have certain volitional qualities in common. An affinity is noted between that theory and Berkeley's early doctrine of the self. Some rivals of the volitional theory invoke a spiritual or physical owner of mental items. They run a risk either of empty formality or of causal superstition. Other rivals postulate a non‐transitive and symmetrical relation in the set of mental items. They must allow in consequence either for joint ownership of one and the same mental item, or for incompatible simultaneous decisions by one and the same person, or for new forms of death. This makes them disquieting. Another rival invokes a transitive and symmetrical relation defined in terms of co‐consciousness. Even that allows for incongruous simultaneities. The volitional theory is free from such disadvantages.     

How the disadvantaged appraise group-based exclusion: The path from legitimacy to illegitimacy

Although many forms of differential treatment based on group membership are perceived to be legitimate, disadvantaged group members’ responses to discrimination have been studied primarily in contexts in which such treatment is appraised as illegitimate. This has resulted in an impoverished understanding of differential group-based treatment and a failure to illuminate the processes by which discrimination can shift from being seen as legitimate to being viewed as illegitimate. We discuss the determinants of disadvantaged group members’ legitimacy appraisals and the de-legitimisation process, whereby forms of discrimination appraised as legitimate come to be increasingly perceived as illegitimate. Whether group-based exclusion is addressed collectively or individually depends on socio-structural factors such as the pervasiveness of discrimination, impermeability of intergroup boundaries, and the availability of cognitive alternatives to the status quo. We conclude that understanding the antecedents and consequences of legitimacy appraisals is necessary to develop a comprehensive account of disadvantaged group members’ experiences of group-based discrimination.     

The Impact of Leadership Style on Moral Identity and Subsequent In-Role Performance: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study investigated the impact of supervisors’ servant leadership (i.e., leadership that starts with a leader who wants to serve) on supervisees’ moral identity and subsequent in-role performance. Data from 226 supervisor–supervisee dyads were collected from several domestic and multinational companies operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to confirm the factorial validity of the measures that were employed in this study. The hypothesized moderated mediation model was tested using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Based on social learning theory, the results showed that supervisees’ moral identity served as the psychological mediating mechanism through which supervisors’ servant leadership led to supervisees’ increased in-role performance. Furthermore, the results also supported supervisees’ avoidance orientation as the dispositional boundary condition of this mediating effect. This study contributes to both the servant leadership and moral identity literatures by addressing questions with useful theoretical and managerial implications.     

Coping with Age‐related Threats to Role Identity: Older Couples and the Management of Household Money

As more couples live together into old age, difficult decisions have to be made about money matters, including the financing of late‐life care. This paper analyses in‐depth qualitative data from six older heterosexual couples, part of a wider study concerning money management in later life. Research when these cohorts were younger found that the organisation of money management within households was specialised and highly gendered, leading to substantive imbalances of power and access to financial resources, while also being core to the formation and maintenance of gendered role identities and couple identities. We find in this study that if a partner's ability to fulfil a money management role identity is threatened by later‐life issues such as poor health and cognitive decline, the other partner may try to protect that aspect of the spouse's role identity, using various covert strategies. This might be done to shore up the spouse's self‐esteem in the face of such age‐related threats to role identity, to ‘keep up appearances’ to the outside world or to maintain their identity as a couple at a time of life when there may be multiple difficulties to deal with. These findings have implications for practice and policy in the realm of money and identity management in later life. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Networking Sites: Mediating the Self and its Communities

What do social networking sites reveal about the relation between the self and the community? We conceptualise social networking sites as technologies of the self and the community enabling individuals to self‐present and also objectifying the community's evaluation of individuals (through ‘structures of recognition’ such as page views, friends and lovehearts). We analyse the way in which 37 Scottish adolescents used the social networking site Bebo in nonprescribed and creative ways. First, they challenged the single authorship of profiles by co‐creating multi‐authored profiles. Second, they used creative language to obscure meaning from the preying eyes of parents, teachers and potential employers. We conclude by discussing the simplistic assumptions that Bebo makes about the relation between the self and the community. In contrast, newer social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+ are increasingly enabling people to present different facets of themselves to different communities. How people use social networking sites, and how these sites are developing to attract more users, reveals how the multiplicity of human identity is related to the multiple communities that people participate in. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meta‐stereotypes,Social Image and Help Seeking: Dependency‐Related Meta‐stereotypes Reduce Help‐Seeking Behaviour

People who need help can be reluctant to seek it. This can be due to social image concerns. Here, we investigate if these concerns may be prompted by a salient negative meta‐stereotype: the belief that one's group is judged negatively by another group. Specifically, we researched group members' help‐seeking behaviour in the context of a dependency‐related meta‐stereotype. In a two‐condition study (N = 45), we manipulated participants' belief that their national group was judged dependent by a significant out‐group. We then examined their subsequent help‐seeking behaviour on a real‐world task. Participants whose social identity as a group member was salient showed greater reluctance to seek help when the meta‐stereotype was made prominent compared with when it was not. This suggests that, in a context where social image and social identity concerns are relevant, group members are willing to sacrifice the possibility of accessing needed help in order to avoid confirming a negative stereotype of their group. The implications of these results for helping transactions and community development are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.